Second Skin

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “You fucking know that’s not what I meant. Did it ever occur to you that if you were Redback, we’d be home in bed instead of outside the Hexed emergency room? That the Loup never would have touched you? I just don’t get why you do this to yourself when it would be so easy to fix. You’d understand me, you’d be safe. What’s wrong with any of that?”

  Then again, it could be a lot better.

  “I don’t want to be something I’m not,” I said simply. “You’re a Redback, Dmitri, and I’m me.” My head throbbed and the were snarled and paced inside my consciousness, scenting my anger and begging me to let it out, just for a second, just a sniff of blood . . .

  “So you’ve made clear,” Dmitri said. “And let me make myself clear: these problems? Are yours. You refuse to give even an inch to anyone. So we fight. I don’t like it, but I stick around hoping you’ll learn how to work with me.”

  “Stop patronizing me,” I muttered. “You suck at it.”

  “And you refuse to see what’s right in front of your face!” Dmitri bellowed, hitting the roof of my car with the flat of his hand. I narrowed my eyes.

  “Which is what, exactly? You and your weird, obsessive need to have me in your little club? The fact that you’re so hung up on controlling me you can’t let this go even when it’s ripping us to shreds?”

  “The fact that I can’t protect you!”

  I froze. Dmitri pressed his hands over his face, his cheeks crimson and his heart thudding so loudly I could hear it clear across the car. “It’s not going away, Luna,” he said from behind his hands. “And I have no one. I’m a Redback in name only, and if something happens . . . I can’t. Do you understand me? I can’t do anything to keep you safe, and even if I could, I don’t know that it would let me.”

  I hobbled over to him and pulled his hands away from his face. “I’ve seen what it is to be in a pack, Dmitri,” I told him. “I’ve felt it—that ugly, nasty dominate that anyone, anyone in a pack who’s above you can give. I’ve seen the beatings and the rapes and the fear in those women’s eyes.”

  Crap. Now I was starting to get emotional. My eyes stung, not from the phase but from tears. “I almost was one of those women, and I still wake up shaking, thinking about what would have happened to me if I’d stayed with the man who gave me the bite.”

  “It wouldn’t be like that,” Dmitri insisted. “The Redbacks are honorable. And they could keep you safe.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “All it would take is one time with a dominate stronger than mine—one dealer who didn’t want a bust, one drunk loser who wanted some tail—and my job and my life would be over. I couldn’t do my job. I’d have nothing except fear.”

  Dmitri grunted. “You’d have me.”

  “I already have you,” I said, pulling him down and kissing him on the forehead. “Why can’t you let me live my own life?”

  “Because sooner or later you’re going to find someone tougher than you,” Dmitri said. He got into the Fairlane and started the engine. It made a clatter, and a little smoke curled from under the hood. “And I can’t think about what will happen then. But I want you to think about this. That’s all I ask, Luna: if you love me, consider that I might be right.”

  I did love Dmitri. And I did consider. But years of keeping myself out of a pack, from being someone’s property and responsibility, wouldn’t let me say it out loud. I wanted to keep Dmitri close, but every time we ran up against this wall of Redback/Insoli, I reacted badly, and I wasn’t entirely sure I could ever change that. And it scared me.

  But I would never say any of that out loud.

  When most people are mad and confused, they sit around and brood, or take out their frustration on their loved ones. They drink or eat or go out and get into bar fights.

  I’d done all of those back in my other life, when the were ruled me, and I’d found that none of these compared to a day at the firing range.

  Fitzpatrick tapped me on the shoulder when I’d expended all the rounds in my Glock. “You okay, Wilder? You’re shooting like you got something against life in general.”

  “Fine,” I muttered. Batista and the rest of Tac-3 were arrayed down the alleys. SWAT officers had to requalify every three months and we tried to do it together, then go out afterward for beers. Bastista called his target back from the end of the range. The ten shots clumped neatly together in the center mass.

  “Shit,” Fitzpatrick muttered. He crumpled up his target and stalked off.

  “Seriously . . . you all right?” Batista ejected his clip, cleared the chamber, and started to reload.

  “Fine!” I said again. “Gods, I’m just fine. Everybody can just stop asking, all right?”

  “You’re pulling to the right there, a little,” said Batista. “Something happen to your hand? You didn’t get hit too bad by the quake out at the beach?”

  I flexed my wrist, which was healed but still smarting like a hamster was chewing on my nerve endings. Weres heal up fast, but we’re not invincible. “No,” I said. “Just smashed some crockery at my place.” To deflect Batista’s bright black gaze I said, “How about you?”

  “Don’t ask.” He rolled his eyes. “Smashed up the picture window, and Marisol’s flower beds got torn apart. I haven’t heard the end of that for two days. Where she thinks I get the cash to make everything better on a police salary, only her and God know.”

  I put a fresh clip into the Glock. “They can do marvelous things with credit cards these days, Javier.”

  “Hex me,” he muttered. “My abuela told me Marisol was gonna put me in the poorhouse, but did I listen? No.”

  The intercom on the wall squawked. “Wilder, someone here to see you.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the range commander in his little glassed-in office. He mimed picked up the phone, but I gestured for whoever-it-was to come in.

  Bryson appeared a moment later, goggles and ear protection mussing his greasy pompadour. “I’ve been looking all over for you!” he yelled at top volume.

  Batista gave him the eye. “Wilder, you know this clown?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said. “What is it, Bryson?”

  “What did you find out!” he bellowed. I yanked off his ear protection and bent my mouth close.

  “I can hear you!”

  Bryson winced and gave me a reproachful look. “What did you find out about the Loup?” he asked in a normal tone.

  I sighted down the Glock, exhaled, and pulled the trigger. I put half the clip into the paper target, the recoil beating against my wrist, before I answered. “Nothing about your case.”

  “Nothing!” Bryson yelped. “What are you doin’ to me, Wilder? Jesus!”

  “Oh, settle down. You’re gonna have a heart attack going on like this, you know. I did hear some mildly interesting chatter about how the Loup have been knocked off the top five list for scumbag drug dealers in the city, and they’re hurting. Might be why they’re so cranky about the Lautrec thing.”

  Bryson put a protective hand over his chest. “Did you at least get ’em to lay off nailing crap to my door?”

  “Gee, David, between them threatening to kill me and falling off a fire escape, it sort of slipped my mind.” I fired again, and a cluster of papery black flowers appeared on the target’s head mass. I ejected the Glock’s clip, cleared the chamber, and called the target back.

  Bryson whistled appreciatively when the half-shredded human outline came close. “Nice work. Almost as good as my stuff. You know I had the highest score in my class when I went to the academy?”

  “David, you shot yourself in the foot last year. With a flare gun.”

  He turned red. “There was a lot going on in my life back then. My concentration slipped.”

  “Whatever.” I holstered the Glock and waved good-bye to Batista and Eckstrom before pulling David out of the alleys and into the antechamber. “Did you have some reason to come down here other than to interrupt my work with stupid bragging?”

  �
��Actually”—he flourished a file at me—“I did. But the bragging was definitely a fringe benefit.”

  I pushed my protective gear over the counter to a uniform and signed myself out. “Get on with it, then. Since you slithered back onto my radar I’ve been having a really shitty time, and this isn’t helping.”

  “Boyfriend got one of those personal problems? They make pills for that.”

  “Too bad they don’t make pills to cure rampant stupidity,” I said. “Focus, David. What do you want?”

  He opened the file and showed me a picture of a pretty girl, brunette, a short bob framing a round moon face and a turned-up nose. “Bertrand Lautrec had a girlfriend.”

  I took the photo and examined the sheet cursorily. Laurel Hicks. She was a nurse, her prints on file with the DEA. She lived in the unfashionable section of downtown and she was twenty-four years old. “She’s not Loup. Not even the born ones look this good. Another pack?”

  Bryson grinned salaciously. “Human.”

  That stopped me. Weres from different packs isn’t unheard of—it’s how alliances are made and broken. Alliances between pack weres and Insoli weres aren’t accepted, but it’s not impossible. Dmitri and I were proof of that. Sort of. I pushed away thoughts of the silence and towering black cloud of anger waiting for me at home.

  Weres and plain humans, though? It doesn’t happen. No human would be crazy enough to risk exposing herself to that without comparative were strength and quick healing. Plus, there’s the off chance your beloved might tear you to shreds if you walk in during a phase. Some plain humans get off on magick, and witches intermingle freely, but I’ve yet to meet a plain human who would willingly go with a were.

  “Okay, you got my attention,” I told Bryson.

  He grinned. “Thought that might do it. I’m going over to interview her. Wanna come along?”

  I did. I did so badly that my stomach did a little flip at the thought of working through a case again. But if things with Dmitri were bad now . . .

  “Sure,” I said. “Let me get my stuff.”

  Laurel Hicks’s apartment building would make a clown want to kill himself. One of those boxy gray numbers from the 1960s, exactly like every other boxy gray tenement in the surrounding street. Dust and oppressive summer heat pressed down over the street like water and made me sweat just by virtue of exiting Bryson’s car.

  A homeless man dozed in the building’s doorway, mumbling about smoke and shadows. The lobby smelled like bleach and the arthritic elevator smelled like vomit.

  “Cheerful goddamn place,” Bryson muttered, punching the button for the third floor.

  “I’ll let you do the talking,” I said as we rode. “Until you start fucking up, of course, at which point I’ll step in.”

  “You’re too kind,” Bryson said, favoring me with a toothy grin. We knocked on Laurel’s door and heard a cat meowing within. Bryson fidgeted.

  “Don’t like cats?” I asked.

  “I’m allergic,” he said shortly. I hid a grin by pretending to cough.

  “Who is it?” A voice as colorless as the cardboard-colored walls and carpet around us barely penetrated the scuffed apartment door.

  “It’s the police, Miss Hicks,” said Bryson. “Could you open up, please?”

  “I’m afraid this is a bad time,” said Laurel Hicks, suddenly sounding alert and panicky. “Could you please come back?”

  “Can’t do that, ma’am,” said Bryson. “This is an urgent police matter.”

  “No . . . no, I really think it would be better if you came back later,” she said. “I . . . I just can’t . . .”

  “Laurel,” I said, stepping close to the door. “We want to talk to you about Bertrand. Just talk. I promise that the Loup will never know we were here.”

  A long silence reigned. Bryson glared at me. “Nice work.”

  “Just wait,” I muttered. Laurel snuffled on the other side of the door.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do,” I said. “And I don’t blame you. Now please open the door.”

  Another small eternity later, the deadbolt clicked back and Laurel’s pale face appeared in the crack of the door. “You can’t stay long. I have to get to my shift at the hospital.”

  She was still in her pajamas, eyes puffy and hair ratty, but I smiled politely and pretended to believe her lie. “After you,” I told David.

  He showed Laurel his shield, and she gestured us inside with a tired, boneless motion. As we passed the threshold magick prickled over my skin, and I looked up to see a twisted black root nailed over the door frame with a steel roofing nail.

  A little bit gothic for someone who seemed strictly pastel.

  “I can’t tell you anything about Bertrand,” Laurel said immediately. Her apartment was a tiny affair, low popcorn ceilings and a vinyl floor made to look like wood. A sad chintz sofa and ratty hooked rug hunched in the corner.

  I scented another body in the place and a calico cat leapt to the back of the sofa, puffed up to twice its size, hissed at me, and took off into the bedroom.

  “I’m sorry,” said Laurel. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. Bryson cleared his throat at me and frowned so hard his eyebrows merged.

  “Well, speak up then, boy,” I said, stepping back and letting him close in on Laurel.

  “Thanks,” he hissed at me. “Miss Hicks, I just need to clear a few things up.”

  “You might as well sit down,” she said in the same tone you’d use to talk about knee surgery. She flopped back on the sofa and dabbed at her eyes with a well-used tissue.

  Bryson awkwardly took a seat in the threadbare velvet armchair across the way and I stood at his shoulder, trying to look laid-back. Also, standing behind Bryson gave me a dandy vantage into the rest of the apartment, which consisted of a pocket-size kitchen and bedroom, with a bathroom done in Pepto pink off it. All cops are inveterate snoops. Never leave them alone while you pop into the washroom.

  “Miss Hicks, why didn’t you contact the police when Bertrand . . . passed away?” Poor Bryson had slept through sensitivity training, that much was obvious.

  Laurel stared at the wall and sniffed heavily. “Never thought you’d need anything from me.”

  “Miss Hicks, when someone dies it’s customary to be a little more broken up about it than you are right now. You getting me, sweetheart?” Bryson leaned forward like a pit bull smelling hamburger meat.

  My eyes roved over the countertops, which were covered in empty pizza boxes and Lean Cuisine containers, a dish of cat food, and a pair of orange prescription bottles.

  I whacked Bryson on the shoulder and he winced. “The hell, Wilder!”

  “Laurel . . . may I call you Laurel?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “Whatever you want.”

  “Laurel, is it true that you didn’t get in touch with the police because of Bertrand’s involvement with the Loup?”

  She looked me over, her eyes swimming up from their sedated depths to really examine me. Finally she asked, “Bitten or born?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. Rule One was keep the focus on the victim. Get your subject to empathize with him, and with you. “But I know how hard it can be to be an outsider with a pack, put it that way. Why are you afraid of Bertrand’s pack?”

  Bryson gaped at me and I snarled under my breath, letting my eyes flash gold, which he wisely interpreted as the signal to shut the Hex up.

  “Gerard Duvivier is a nasty little worm,” Laurel said, feeling making its way into her voice for the first time, “but I’m not scared of him. I’m a psychiatric nurse. He can’t rattle me.”

  “Good for you,” I said. “Now explain to us why you didn’t come forward. You cared about Bertrand, didn’t you?”

  She shook once, like a plucked string, and started crying again. Bryson whipped out a monogrammed handkerchief, bright white against the stained tones of the apartm
ent, and handed it over. Laurel took it and buried her face in it while she sobbed.

  “I . . . only knew him . . . a couple of months,” she managed. “But he . . . I think we would have fallen in love, if he’d . . . he hadn’t . . .”

  “I understand,” I said. “And it’s shattering when someone dies suddenly, I know. How did you hear about it? Did the pack threaten you?”

  “No,” said Laurel, gulping in air. “I was there.”

  Bryson sat bolt-upright in his seat, and I felt my own heartbeat pick up.

  “What?” Bryson managed. “What?”

  “I was there,” said Laurel impassively. “We were camping in the Sierra Fuego Preserve.”

  “Why did you run?” I asked Laurel softly. She met my eyes.

  “You’d run, too, Detective. Believe me. A human and a were, with his pack already in upheaval? How would that have looked? I’d be in a cell and I have patients who need me. It was too dangerous to stay.”

  “Oh?” I sat on the arm of Bryson’s chair, ignoring his grunt, and didn’t correct her on the “Detective” assessment. “What’s happening in the Loup?”

  “Bertrand was about to challenge Gerard for dominance,” Laurel said. “To be pack leader. Bertrand had more right to it or something, he said. The Lautrecs have been in Nocturne for a long time.”

  “Fascinating as that history lesson is,” Bryson said, “I’m gonna need you to come down to the Twenty-fourth Precinct and make a formal statement. Can you handle that, Miss Hicks?”

  She looked to me. “Only if she comes along.”

  “Hex me,” Bryson muttered under his breath. “All right, fine. You game to pay a visit home, Wilder?”

  “Not my home anymore,” I said. Going back to the Twenty-fourth ranked just above sitting on a bed of nails watching a snuff movie marathon.

  “Wilder, for the love of the gods in the pantheon, will you please just go along with me so the skirt will come make a statement?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. This better not take long, though. I’m on call.”